


On My Honor Be

by oninofukuchou (OrderOfRevan)



Category: Hakuouki, イケメン戦国 時をかける恋 | Ikemen Sengoku: Toki o Kakeru Koi (Visual Novel), 天下統一恋の乱 | Sakura Amidst Chaos | Samurai Love Ballad (Visual Novel)
Genre: 30 Themes Challenge, F/M, Hamamura Makoto, Kurosawa Takahiro, M/M, Satojii Hanako, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-01 13:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17245097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrderOfRevan/pseuds/oninofukuchou
Summary: Snapshots into the lives and psyches of six different characters from different universes.





	1. Part One

**Hijikata Toshizo: Ambition**

There was no place for regret in his life. 

Between the hours he woke and then slept again he did so many things that the emotion didn’t have time to take root in his conscious thought. A part of him knew that it slept in the parts of his soul that he did not regularly confront, the same aspect of himself that had grown for years in quiet and forged him into a samurai. 

Someday that same regret would rear its head, having molded his mindset and informed his decisions in silence… But for now, he could push it away in the name of steady progress and lock it behind the veil of his own ambition. Maybe it was cold, but it was also practical, and he was nothing if not a practical man. 

So practical that he was known as a demon, ruthless and effective at punishing sinners who stood at the gates of their own personal hell. It wasn’t a reputation undeserved, one that he’d built on the back of his ambition, the most secret and tender thing he carried for it was both the source of his strength and his weakness. 

And he would never show it to anyone. 

* * *

 

**Makoto Hamamura: Dream**

 

When she was a little girl she’d dreamed of simple things.

Sweets and naps underneath the branches of great trees, journeys beyond the walls of her little family home run by an efficient mother and guarded by her demanding father. In her mind she could almost picture the vivid colors that youth and inexperience painted the world in as she imagined it. In her mind, lords of bygone eras riding across the countryside with their armies and laying low the wicked and deceitful. More than anything, she wanted to capture the feeling she had when she thought about the legendary figures of their country’s past and share it with others, her spirit distilled into ink on paper. 

But then came her first marriage interview, failed because she wasn’t submissive enough. 

It was her first indication that she on her own would not be enough, and that youthful vision had started to fade and corrode in the face of her very adult reality. Years passed, nieces and nephews were born and still she kept the words inside, living in a way that filled her with the vain hope that she could one day be ‘something’ to her family. 

But that dream, too, died, a joke on the lips of her father about his plain eldest daughter, worth no more than the value she could provide to her sisters as a midwife. 

Inside of her, emotions burned like fire, as red and as bright as those childish thoughts of samurai.

* * *

 

**Takeda Shingen (Ikesen): Gamble**

 

How much would one man pay for a second chance at life? 

He’d seen men at all stages of their journey through this world. 

In his arms he’d held squirming babies, watched them mature into boys with sharp tongues and eyes as hard as tempered metal, and seen mature men curse their very fates as they raged against the death that had tried to claim them. Consumed by ambition or rage, empowered by loyalty or a lust for revenge, he’d seen all manner of people pass him by, some staying long enough to allow him to touch their fates and join with their path for a time. 

More than anyone he knew how precious a single life was, saw how clearly each person’s path wove  together, a patchwork of colored threads that formed a tapestry so bright it was blinding. Every thread was valuable, and if it was severed too soon it could hurt any number of people, leaving an impact so large that it could be physically felt. 

And even then, some people threw away their lives for a chance at fun, or wealth or… Or revenge. It wasn’t something he could understand, when every moment he rolled a pair of dice and clutched his rosary to pray that he could steal a few more moments. He wanted that nothing was left undone when his breath was finally stolen from him. 

There was no way of knowing what a life was worth to any individual man, but what he wouldn’t give just to live one moment in the world he wanted to create. 

* * *

 

**Kurosawa Takahiro (Izumi): Feudal**

 

History smelled like incense and old paper. 

It was a warm, dim, thing, no more than memories imprinted like a wax seal, distinct but shockingly fragile. That was how Izumi had always thought of it from the time she was a girl memorizing dates of battles for tests, something distant, something that only people who wanted to look far away from the now were interested in. She lived in the present, with blood and flesh and the breath that each person drew into their lungs that made their neurons fire and their heart keep pumping. 

But then things shifted and the world fell out from underneath her feet in a fog, leaving her in that faded world that didn’t smell like mothballs and dust. 

As it turned out, history was gunpowder burns and the acrid tang of blood, it was the sound of a beating drum and poetry sung in a resounding voice rising like a funeral dirge over the treetops. History was not some distant thing that couldn’t affect her, it was a part of a chain of cause and effect, more present than she’d ever given it credit for… And stories about old lords who did this and that suddenly seemed so much more real when you could see strain of their limbs as they moved.

Or when you watched the sheen of sweat on their brows, heard the way their breath rasped between their lips, and knew… Finally understood… History was just as fragile as that body because history was not contained in words, but carried on the backs of men and women who breathed war to make each moment their own. 

And it was that mindset that made Izumi wonder if she had ever really lived at all. 

* * *

 

**Takeda Shingen (SLBP): Conqueror**

 

When the men of the world were boys, they spent their days thinking that the strength of a man was contained in the width of his shoulders. It was what he’d thought, watching the broad back of his father, hair as red as a sunset with an aura that commanded respect from all who knew him. 

He’d thought the man was infallible, and then his world had come crashing down. 

In retrospect, he’d been so self-centered, focused so much on his own pain that he failed to see how his own father’s weak will had thundered across the countryside and left their people mired in an impossible mess. But he’d barely come of age, hadn’t he. He’d only just taken the name of Harunobu when the weight of all the hopes and lives in Kai were thrust upon him and he’d learned that broad shoulders were not enough to bear that alone. 

What made a man strong, what won him wars, was the heat of the fire he carried in his breast. 

It was how much he wanted to change the world around him, no matter how vain or shallow his desires were, and if he could not stand against the force of opposition… He would crumble, just like millet trampled underneath the hooves of a war charger. 

His words would mean nothing, his recitations of the speeches of great generals falling empty and leaving the hearts of all those who had relied on him aching from the loss. 

He would never make the mistake of thinking strength was contained in body again, for fear of leaving nothing but broken hearts and betrayed trust behind him. 

* * *

 

**Satojii Hanako: Servant**

 

The delicate balance of the world could be offset by a single whispered word. 

No one knew this better than Hanako did.

A whispered word had tethered her to life, separating her from the family that had been taken from her. Sometimes she wondered if it was a mistake not to cut her stomach open the way she was supposed to in order to honor her late husband, but when she pictured the faces of her sons her hand was stayed. One day she would join them, but until she brought the restless spirits of her two sons peace she would stay her own hand and hope to plunge the blade into those who had betrayed her husband’s sacred trust. 

Little by little, she would return balance to the world and right the wrongs that had been done to them. 

She was nothing but a woman, but one woman empowered with the will of the gods could bring the lords of provinces to bear. Hanako was nothing but a servant to the will of those same gods, shackled to her fate just as her husband and sons had been sentenced to death by the whispers of a duplicitous maidservant. 

But one servant could topple empires, and before all was said and done she would restore the honor of her husband’s house… or die a warrior’s death trying. 


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look into their feelings on some of their most important people.

**Hijikata Toshizo: Wonder**

 

Time and time again, he’d walk through the streets and wonder if he was dreaming. 

Not that his life was glamorous, exactly. He honestly doubted most people would be content with it, living day to day with the risk of death and bloodshed, every second sworn in service to something other than yourself. 

Sure, most people were willing to make sacrifices for their families and the people they loved. 

That was intuitive, one way or another, wanting to uphold the honor of your family name and carry on their legacy. People were people, and in a basic sense most of them wanted the same kinds of things, which was why so many never questioned what they were given and lived perfectly content lives.

But at the end of the day, some people were just different enough to want to be someplace else. Like he and Kondo, bound by their shared dream, the thread connecting them some dark shade that linked their fates together. He knew that they were each other’s greatest support, ideology and practicality, charisma and discernment, foresight and reminiscence, the long sword and the side arm. 

Without Kondo there could be no Hijikata, and he liked to think on his most optimistic days that Kondo needed him just as much for them to be who they were. 

So if it was a dream, it sure as hell wasn’t one he wanted to wake up from any time soon. 

But even as he said that, he knew all good things had to come to an end… one way or another.

And in his heart, he was always preparing. 

* * *

 

**Hamamura Makoto: Admission**

 

The city of Kyoto did not readily welcome outsiders. 

She was a girl from the east, rough and tumble and all Edo salt and sweat. Truthfully, she didn’t even have to speak to give herself away, dressed much more plainly than the fine Kyoto women did, working with her roughened hands to support herself. A single lady, a long way from her family, from what people thought of as an obligation… Though it was one they saw her as shirking. 

What kind of daughter disobeyed the will of her father and mother?

What kind of daughter rejected her parent’s choice of husband, the heir to her father’s way of life? 

The answer was really simply in that she was just a woman who couldn’t shake the dreams that still shivered softly in the most intimate parts of her spirit, inspiration stirring those things she’d long given up on like a spring breeze through the trees. Makoto had long ago accepted that she had to be what she was and that she didn’t have any other choice. Her spirit was in the words she put on the page, images of samurai from the time of the fractured states brought to life through her brush strokes. 

But it still wasn’t enough.

If she were being honest, she would admit that she felt there was something more for her out there, a great story which only she could write… One that was just waiting for her to find it. 

So she worked and she wrote, her eyes ever open and on the horizon, searching for an answer to the yearning inside of her chest and wondering if she had finally lost her mind. 

* * *

 

**Takeda Shingen (Ikesen): Salt**

 

Oftentimes he did things on a whim.

No, that wasn’t quite it… It wasn’t a whim as much as instinct distilled to the point where it was subconscious. He could feel things, sense the potential in people, raw and ready to be put to the forge and pounded into something worth using. 

Truthfully it was a matter of patience and the application of pressure. 

He’d seen it work before, watching boys grow to men underneath enough duress, observing from the sidelines as they overcame challenge after challenge. 

Sometimes there were unexpected results. 

Never more so than the case of the timid and broken Uesugi Kenshin. 

If good deeds truly did come back to you, he was the oddest case of karmic reward that Shingen had ever experienced in his long and complicated existence. How could a wisp of a boy so broken he could barely function come to be like a frozen winter storm brewing on the horizon was a mystery many had contemplated… And though Shingen had always suspected the lightning wit and razor blade will beyond those sea and forest eyes he never could have guessed at the unexpected ally his rival would become. 

First it came in the form of salt, sent to him when his access to the sea was cut off by enemies. 

Then in his tacit disapproval of the Oda and their methods, for even brutal Kenshin was not a man who would involve the innocent in his desire to fight and conquer. 

And now, as the Oda-Tokugawa forces approached from afar like a black and golden tide, he turned northward knowing that his last hope may well be hidden within Kasugayama’s corridors. 

* * *

 

**Kurosawa Takahiro (Izumi): Insecure**

 

Izumi hadn’t had a real friend since her first year of college. 

She’d forgotten what it was like to have someone to confide in, to have someone looking out for her, to have someone come to her when things weren’t going well and ask for her advice. Once she’d had it before she and Sasuke had taken separate paths, their lifelong bond slowly corroded away by distance and time. 

In pursuit of that old friendship she’d moved across time, loyalty burning inside of her chest and chaining her to a new fate. 

And it was there she’d found the woman named Chiyome. 

Chiyome, who saw through her mousy shell, maybe because she wore a shell of her own -- a spy posing as a courtesan, hiding a clever mind behind her rouge and powder. The two of them could see eye to eye, and for the first time in a long time, someone had faith in the person Izumi was beyond her appearance.

And it was that small flame that this beautiful, confident, woman sparked inside of her that started a change inside of her that she herself did not yet recognize, the quiet of her past blooming into something bright and red and bursting with life.  

The winter of her loneliness had finally passed, though she did not know it, the spring of her future spread before her, a banquet of new experiences that would forever change her. 

* * *

 

**Takeda Shingen (SLBP): Appetite**

 

Shingen was not a man who practiced moderation in every form. 

Or rather, he either had a tight iron control upon his impulses or indulged in them. 

It wasn’t precisely Kai’s best kept secret and those who knew him for a long time knew that he enjoyed his excesses. He took pleasure in simple things, like physical exertion, fine drink, fine food, and the baser pleasures of the flesh. Each played on some instinctual desire within him, satiated that wild and hungry thing that he so often kept at bay. 

So while many knew about his appetites, they didn’t know the causes for it. 

But Kansuke did. 

In very many ways, he was Shingen’s opposite -- always in control of himself, so very rarely unrestrained -- his face impassive and as difficult to read as an intercepted missive between the Europeans. The language his body spoke was one Shingen had come to understand only after years of knowing him, and he had only come to this own understanding through exposure.

On the other hand, he wondered how long Kansuke had understood him… And how long his face had been so gentle towards and critical of “Takeda Shingen” at the same time. Those dark, calm, eyes of his saw through Shingen’s outer layers to the man underneath and understood the reasons for his appetites -- 

The desire for distraction as he carried everything on his own so that the Takeda and all of the Empire could live in a world beyond this war. 

That release was vital to him, and having Kansuke there with him, possessing that understanding, was a comfort that he could not give voice to. Even the most powerful of daimyos needed a support system, at least one person who saw them as themselves, one whom they could trust unconditionally. 

As long as he had Kansuke… 

* * *

 

**Satojii Hanako: Falcon**

 

A feather fallen from the rafters had brought them together. 

It was brown, mottled with stripes and flares of gold and tan like his hair underneath the sun, hair that she quickly found looked pitch black in the shadows in which he was shockingly comfortable. He’d taken it from her hands as he fell from the ceiling, graceful in spite of the way his bulky body towered over her and blocked her view of the moon, his fingers rough and his smile a wide crescent. 

Hanako had learned his name was Sasuke, and in spite of the way he laughed and joked with the retainers in the yard in the mornings, he was a shinobi. Within moments he had seen through her meager disguise, laying her bare in a way that made her feel neither ashamed nor guilty, and against all odds she opened up to him.

The words came out of her, her desire for vengeance like a bitter draught that spilled from her lips and tasted far worse coming up. 

He’d listened, this man named Sasuke, his warm hand falling on her shoulder when it became too much and said he understood. And against all odds she had believed him, believed in the sincerity that flashed like moonlight off of the surface of the water within the depths of his tawny eyes. 

He offered no advice after she was done, only his friendship, and for the first time in a very long time… Hanako felt her heart swell and remembered what it felt like to fly with a companion at her side. 

Little by little, her world expanded once again


End file.
